Staff Software Engineer - Canada

Motive; Toronto; Remote; CAD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading IoT platform company in Toronto is seeking a Staff System Software Engineer to design and develop innovative IoT solutions. You will tackle complex technical challenges and have a significant impact on the company's engineering direction. Ideal candidates have over 8 years of software development experience, proficiency in programming languages like Golang and Kotlin, and possess strong problem-solving and leadership skills. Join us in building cutting-edge technology in a dynamic environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in software development with expertise in various platforms.
• Proven experience in writing maintainable, high-performance code.
• Strong communication skills for translating technical challenges.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize high-performance software for IoT platforms.
• Collaborate with teams to translate ideas into actionable plans.
• Troubleshoot and optimize software on distributed systems.
• Create end-to-end simulation frameworks for system validation.
• Use AI-powered tools to enhance productivity.
• Mentor technical team members and foster a culture of excellence.
• Solve real-time problems through rapid iteration.

Skills

Golang

Kotlin

C++

Software development

Full Stack understanding

CI/CD

Cloud-native experience

Leadership skills

Problem-solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field

Job description

Who we are: Motive empowers the people who run physical operations with tools to make their work safer, more productive, and more profitable. Motive serves more than 120,000 customers – from Fortune 500 enterprises to small businesses – across a wide range of industries, including transportation and logistics, construction, energy, field service, manufacturing, agriculture, food and beverage, retail, and the public sector. Motive offers a platform that helps safety, operations and finance teams manage drivers, vehicles, equipment, and fleet related spend in a single system, with industry leading AI to reduce manual workloads.

About the Role:

At Motive, we’re not just looking for engineers—we’re seeking Superbuilders. As a Staff System Software Engineer, you will be at the forefront of designing and developing cutting-edge IoT platforms, turning ambitious visions into scalable, high-performance solutions. You thrive on solving complex technical challenges, mastering new technologies on the fly, and delivering pragmatic solutions that drive impact at scale. This role offers the opportunity to influence technical stack decisions, shape the company’s engineering roadmap, and work closely with the CTO. You will engage in high-impact workstreams with the freedom to innovate, taking ownership of projects across devices, cloud, and mobile platforms. If you are a self-starter with a data-driven mindset and an obsession for excellence, this is the role for you.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Architect and Build: Design, develop, and optimize high-performance software and firmware for next-gen IoT platforms.
• Turn Vision into Reality: Collaborate with executive and product teams to translate abstract ideas into actionable engineering plans.
• Debug and Validate: Troubleshoot and optimize software on complex distributed systems, ensuring security, scalability, and resilience.
• Develop Automated Testing: Create data test driven end to end simulation frameworks to validate system integrity at scale.
• Adopt Cutting-Edge Tools: Leverage AI-powered coding tools to enhance productivity and drive innovation.
• Lead by Example: Act as a technical mentor, fostering a culture of excellence, ownership, and pragmatism across the engineering team.
• Iterate and Innovate: Embrace rapid iteration and experimentation, solving real-time problems and pivoting when necessary to achieve breakthrough results.

What We’re Looking For:

• 8+ years of experience in software development, with deep expertise in either device, backend, cloud, or mobile platforms, and familiarity with others.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Proficiency in Golang, Kotlin, and C++, with a track record of writing elegant, maintainable, and high-performance code.
• Full Stack and Ecosystem understanding - from development and dependencies, modern best practices, to CI/CD understanding, cloud-native, and security-aware experience.
• Experience working with analytics and observability from client to cloud, such as Snowflake and Redash reporting, Grafana and Datadog metrics, and agent methodologies.
• A proven history of independent, ambitious project delivery in fast-paced environments.
• Ability to rapidly master new technologies and adapt to ambiguity, whether it’s distributed systems including embedded devices, machine learning infrastructure, or front-end frameworks.
• A strategic problem-solver who balances technical trade-offs with business impact.
• Strong communication skills, capable of translating complex technical challenges into clear, actionable plans.
• A natural leader with the conviction to push for the right technical solutions and challenge the status quo.

Why Join Us?

This is more than just a job—it’s a chance to build the future of IoT platforms at scale. You’ll work on the toughest technical challenges with high visibility and impact, shaping the engineering direction of Motive. If you’re a Superbuilder—a technical powerhouse who thrives under pressure, learns on the fly, and delivers game-changing solutions—we want to talk. Let’s build something extraordinary together.

Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace is one of Motive's core values. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, abilities and perspectives.

Please review our Candidate Privacy Notice here.

The applicant must be authorized to receive and access those commodities and technologies controlled under U.S. Export Administration Regulations. It is Motive's policy to require that employees be authorized to receive access to Motive products and technology.

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